They're throwing away our money
These tiny plasters we keep putting over severed carotids are doing nothing but making huge messes, says Anna Marie Galea
As I sat through another one-hour drive that should have been a 20-minute one and wondered, among other things, how our country would fare if we were part of yet another war that was started over a random weekend, I found my mind drifting to ‘The Driving Licence Surrender Scheme’. It turns out I didn’t have long to wait for the outcome of that pipe dream.
According to reports, more than 100 young drivers have surrendered their licences under the new government initiative, which allows eligible applicants to give up their licence for five years in exchange for up to €25,000 in total payments. This is sadly nothing to celebrate: the number doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of our immense traffic problem.
I need you to read this next part very slowly and carefully.
According to national data, the number of vehicles on Maltese roads increased by 35 every single day in the last quarter of 2025. Thirty-five new vehicles every day means that, if a month has 31 days, you have 1,085 new vehicles a month on our already congested roads. Now, if only 100 people have given up their licences and there are 35 new vehicles every day, I don’t think it takes a neuroscientist to figure out how very, very little impact this initiative has made. But even worse than all this is how much this drop in the ocean is costing us. If the 100 young drivers fulfil all the requirements they need to and get their €25,000, this winds up costing us €2,500,000, which is not exactly chump change.
Look, we’re long past the point of pretending the number of vehicles on our roads isn’t a problem. We’ve been lied to, gaslit and staggered through every stage of denial; however, as usual, the truth, naked and unafraid, is right at the end of the tunnel waiting for us to look it in the eye.
There was never going to be an easy solution after ignoring all the warning signs that have been flashing for decades but literally throwing away money for no reason isn’t the way to go and I can’t fathom how people with more statistics, information and power than poor little me didn’t see this. If this is the only viable solution the suits in boardrooms can come up with, then I confess I’m severely concerned about how they’re going to handle far more complex issues like our struggling economy, national security and war.
Can we please stop wasting taxpayer (or borrowed) money on initiatives no one asked for and that will have negligible results? Either start taking those metro plans seriously, increase the amount of buses and routes or start taxing people more for owning more than one vehicle. These tiny plasters we keep putting over severed carotids are doing nothing but making huge messes. We don’t need more roads and overpasses just so we can be stuck in traffic at elevated heights. You can’t treat cancer with herbal tea, no matter what the internet tells you.
If this were a film, we’d be at the part where an exhausted-looking woman looks at the partner she unwittingly chose in better, less aware times and says: “This isn’t working anymore.”
And, well, it isn’t.